NZOIA PLATEAU AND ITS TRIBES 22% 
guides’ contention is true, and that in the long grass and 
cover, the spear and shield armed warriors of the Karamojo, 
Elgao, or Nandi, are no match for them. 
Where these people came from they have no idea. They 
say they were here before the Massai, before the Sarequa,, 
and Massai tradition asserts as much. But wherever they 
came from, even to a casual observer it is evident that they 
are a highly developed race. Often the hair alone is 
negroid in type, the lips are thin, the nose fine, sometimes 
almost aquiline, the forehead well modelled. I said 
some way back that we came on the trail of an Elgoa 
war party, and that these Cherangang guides of ours 
seemed instinctively to know whence it came, and on what 
errand it was bound. Their guess we proved afterward 
to be accurate in every particular. It seems the Elgoa had 
been obliged to pay their hut tax (but lately imposed on this 
tribe) in goats. Said they, “The white man has taken many 
of our goats, and says he will take more; let us go and take 
some of the Katosche’s goats to make up.”” One has heard 
of larger and more civilized peoples going to war on pretty 
much the same ground. One of our best hunters, a half- 
breed, Massai Nandi, who has done a lot of “scrapping” 
in his day, was heard to remark, under his breath, that if 
‘““Bwana Hoey had not engaged him just then he’d dearly 
have liked to join the crowd.” They are born “‘scrappers,”’ 
these people, one and all. They don’t make the fuss and 
boastful show, that our own red men, in the days of their 
power and glory, so loved to indulge in. They go much 
more quietly about the trade of stealing and murder, and 
indeed are far braver men. ‘Their contempt for life, all life 
including their own, is complete. Death seems to mean 
very little to them. They bury one of their own dead, if 
you insist on it. If you do not, they leave the body in the 
nearest clump of bushes, and no shadow of death seems to 
trouble, even for an hour, the living. 
